


'Til Their Feet Stop Kicking (The Long Fall Remix)

by sunspeared



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, L4W
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi Pyrope's got a little list. (She's got a little list! Of society offenders who might well be underground, and who never would be missed.) Dave comes along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Til Their Feet Stop Kicking (The Long Fall Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Silver Lining round of the Ouroboros Mix challenge! ...yeah, whatever happened to that. (Welp.)

She once made the mistake of asking: "Aren't you ever _curious,_ Dave? Where I find them?"

Dave shrugged and poured himself another bowl of Froot Loops. "Nah," he said, "I don't really care." 

Sollux Captor had been hatched a dirty show-off, in that quiet way that didn't want parades: it wanted the world to line up before him in an orderly fashion to fall at his feet and lick his boots. On Alternia, he would have been glorious. On Earth, he was just bored. From the safety and comfort of Rose Lalonde's home, he'd cracked two Earth stock exchanges within a month of their arrival and riffled through state secrets like they were a deck of cards.

At this point, one could make him do anything if one challenged him enough. She should have felt worse about that than she did.

TA: 2o what'2 thii2 for anyway.  
TA: p.2. that wa2 a rhetoriical que2tiion, ii don't actually want two know.  
GC: PL4US1BL3 D3N14B1L1TY? >:[   
TA: giive me 2ome crediit tz, a2 iif they'd trace thii2 thiing back two me iif whatever you're planniing goe2 two 2hiit!!! whiich iit wiill.  
GC: OH Y3 OF L1TTL3 F41TH!   
TA: yeah yeah can iit, and check your emaiil.  
TA: BAM. poliice, ho2piital2, fiire department2, morgue2, and remiinder2 that thii2 ii2 a bad iidea, all at your fiingertiip2.  
TA: feel free two genuflect, take all the tiime you need.

With Sollux you could never tell whether he was prophesying or just calling you an idiot, and it was wiser not to ask, lest he _tell_ you.

Life was thin and pale after the game. Earth was thinner and paler, with its one white moon and its weak sun. She took walks in the night and read and paced Dave's apartment in the day and nothing was enough. 

Everything about the law was _wrong_ in ways that made her want to peel it open and make it work. Justice as fairness. Peace as the aim of legislation. Law as fractal, centered in the nebulous-at-best Earth concept of state rather than the person of its practitioners. Individual lawgivers venerated, rather than a body of doctrine honed over the course of the sweeps by a series of great scholars.

And so Terezi made her list.

Dave got home from class and work at well past midnight. He smelled like cafe -- Starbucks, endless cups of black coffee with a small mountain of sugar, hidden beneath the counter for those rare moments when customers weren't looking. He let himself slouch and limp down the hall before forcing himself to straighten up before their door. Possibly it was not fair to ask this of him! Possibly, she did not care.

Drama wasn't only bright colors and itchy fabrics, raised voice and high rhetoric. She had lost her Caegar coin at the end of the universe. _Subdued_ would convince Dave to come with her. Black and grey, leather gloves to suggest _clean hands,_ her glasses and her boots the only bits of color on her. She tucked herself into the smallest space possible in the end of their sagging couch, to force his gaze off-center so he would have to take note.

"I," Terezi said, when he opened the door, "can no longer abide in a world where the justice system assumes innocence before guilt."

*  


He got _precise_ over the next few weeks: fingers came off at the exact spot between the second and third joints Terezi liked them to. He'd studied where the bones and tendons were, how best to get through them and with the least fuss. It was more to spare his sword's edge than to please her, she knew, but please her it did.

"So, the maiming." Dave took out the sock he'd stuffed into his pocket and cleaned the blood off of his sword. He kept his eyes on his blade. The three fingers on the ground between them had already begun to decay, to attract insects, and Terezi smelled every bit of it. "That's gonna be a -- thing. For whatever this is."

"If the defendant is not summarily culled, then he must be left with a permanent reminder of his trial," she said. "Do you object?"

He wouldn't let her down. In her pocket, the jagged corner of the tiny slip of paper she'd written her list on dug into her hip, and she did not dare to reach in to adjust it.

Dave shrugged. "First rule, TZ."

 _You say nothing_ or _No murder_ – it did not matter one bit which he meant, so long as he didn't flinch from doing her bidding. Before he could finish his methodical cleaning, she moved in close enough to him to unnerve. She stepped on the fingers in the process. She made a point of it. The crunch of tiny bones was clear in the quiet of the night. Dave paused just short of the hilt to stare at her, and she ran three fingers through the leftover blood, then licked it off. _  
_  
"It dries dark!" she said. "You could never use this as paint. Good to know."

"Fuck, now you're _trying_ to freak me out," he said, which was her cue to cackle like the madwoman he thought she was.

But Terezi could smell the wonder on him when she dropped from a fire escape and rose up in the alleyway behind defendants, like a nightmare with a head full of the true law and nothing better to do with her time. Awe, when every line of her interrogation clicked into place and the subject of their attentions knew true hopelessness for the first time in his miserable life. There was nothing in Dave that could hide from her.

One night, during a lull in her speech, he pulled a noose from his coat -- improperly knotted, but they had not all spent their childhoods preparing to be executioners – and placed it in her hands. She had not asked him to bring it, and in fact had not even _thought_ to bring one.

That night she walked home a few steps ahead of him the whole way, so that he wouldn't see her jangling out of her skin with glee.

*  


TT: As Dave has no interest in stopping you, and one can only presume that you have no interest in stopping you, I'm here to offer my services.  
GC: TH4TS N1C3  
GC: 1S TH1S 4N 1NT3RV3NT1ON  
TT: How kind of you to ask! I'd been planning on talking around the issue for the next twenty minutes, but I see I'm forced to be straight with you, Terezi.  
TT: If anyone in this fortuitously-restored universe is arrogant enough to tell you outright they're your intellectual equal, and that they're willing to take you on, horn to cerebral horn, as it were, it's me.   
GC: H4H4 WRONG  
TT: Fine. The other one lives in my attic, as he is an old man, an exceptionally scruffy head among windy spaces. He subsists on a diet of lukewarm coffee and laboriously imported jaffa cakes.   
GC: 4 P4L3, S4D 3CHO OF TROLL J4FF4 C4K3S  
TT: God, not you, too.  
TT: When the stars align just right and Venus is in the third house, I manage to lure him blinking into the moonlight for a proper meal, and perhaps some conversation. But he claims to have "done his part" and "washed his hands" of your "weird legbreaking shenanigans or whatever, which is obviously what she wanted the systems backdoor thing for, I mean who did she think she was fooling with the scholarly curiosity thing." And I quote.  
TT: And so it falls to me to say: for heaven's sake, think about what you're doing.   
GC: 4H, Y3S, TH3 3LUS1VE PO1NTB34ST! BY D1CK3NS, M1SS L4LOND3! W3V3 C4UGHT 1T!   
TT: Dave leaves BBC America on, doesn't he.   
GC: TH1S DOCTOR WHO PROGR4MM3 WOULD B3 V4STLY 1MPROV3D BY PROP3R CULL1NGS >8]  
TT: Deflection by taking the obvious bait I've cast you to make a humorous aside.   
GC: T4CKY SHOW1NG OFF BY PO1NT1NG OUT MY 4VO1D4NC3 M3CH4N1SM TO SCOR3 PO1NTS, 4ND 4LSO 4S 4N 3XCUS3 TO M3NT1ON TH4T 1V3 P1CK3D UP ON3 OF D4V3'S H4B1TS  
GC: ROS3, W3 C4N W4ST3 OUR T1M3 D1SS3CTING ON3 4NOTH3R'S T4CT1CS 4ND 3X4M1N1NG TH31R ST34M1NG 3NTR41LS FOR 1NS1GHT 1NTO THE N3XT MOV3 1N TH3 G4M3, OR W3 C4N G3T TH1S OUT OF TH3 W4Y!  
GC: YOU D1S4PPROV3! YOU TH1NK 1 4M GO1NG TO G3T D4V3 K1LL3D, OR 1MPR1SON3D, OR BOTH. TH1S 1S UND3RST4ND4BL3. H3 1S TOO PR3TTY FOR YOUR 34RTH PR1SONS, H3 H4S TOLD M3 SO H1MS3LF.  
GC: H4V3 YOU COM3 TO B3G FOR H1S W3LL-B31NG?   
TT: Oh, no. He can take care of himself.   
GC: TH3N WH4T DO YOU W4NT >:|  
TT: I want to know why, is all.   
GC: SO TH4T BY UND3RST4ND1NG MY R34SONS, YOU C4N B3TT3R P3RSU4D3 M3 4W4Y FROM TH3 P4TH OF WRONG 4CT1ON?   
TT: You must be so bored. Sitting there, all alone. None of your kind to talk to. Dave, out and about all day in the big city.  
TT: I was rather counting on your inability to resist the chance to get on your soapbox and declaim your elaborate self-justificatory rationale at a fellow Seer.  
GC: SN4P  
TT: Hold on, I'll get a notepad.

*

Rose could not be strung along like a Karkat or a Vriska. She was not so terrible a habit as Sollux had the potential to become, but she was terrible nonetheless. Sollux would have told Terezi the exact weight and volume of shit she was full of and let that be the end of it. Rose _played the game_.

If Dave noticed the walls of lavender text on Terezi's screen, he didn't say anything. 

GC: FOR 3X4MPL3, L3TT3R 4ND SP1R1T 4S S3P4R4BL3!  
GC: TH3R3 SHOULD NOT B3 4 G4P; 4 G4P B3TW33N 1NT3RPR3T4T1ON 4ND 1MPL3M3NT4T1ON 1S TH3 F1RST S1GN OF 4 POORLY-CR4FT3D L4W  
GC: 1T 1S NO CH4LL3NG3 4T 4LL TO TW1ST 1T TO YOUR OWN 3NDS 1F TH3Y PUT L34V3 YOU 4N OP3N1NG, WH3R3S TH3 4RT1STRY 1N TH4T?  
GC: UN1TY OF PURPOS3! 3L3G4NC3 OF CONC3PT1ON!   
TT: And then the mutilation.  
GC: H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4 NO TH4TS ONLY TH3 L4ST ST3P

There was considerable groundwork to be laid, after all. Some careless leftover mercy of Skaia kept her from being seen unless she wanted to be! And Earth security was no match for what she'd picked up from a Wiggler's First Evidence-Planting Kit and two and a half sweeps of FLARP.

"Have fun, honey," Dave said before she left, if he was around. She no longer asked whether he wanted to join her on her expeditions, her _investigations_. The stare he'd given her when she asked was contempt but not, a thing whose consequences were entirely closed off to the remains of her Mind-sight. 

He left a very large switchblade and a bagged lunch for her on the counter the next day. She needed neither, and appreciated both.

GC: NO, LOOK, WH3N W3R3 OUT TH3R3  
GC: 4ND H3 KNOWS 3X4CTLY WH3R3 TO CUT TO C4US3 TH3 MOST P41N W1TH TH3 L34ST 4CTU4L D4M4G3  
GC: IT 1S 1N3FF4BL3  
GC: 1 C4NNOT D3SCR1B3 1T  
TT: Hold on, let me try.  
TT: 1 H4V3 TH3 HUG3ST BON3R R1GHT NOW >:O

He left her books, too, more than she could ever read.

"I mean," he'd say, "what are you going to do, go on Reddit all day? Get Tumblr famous?"

Terezi snatched the volume from where he'd been dangling it over her head. When she passed her palm over the cover she could feel the contrast of the ink under her skin. It was new and unexplained and at least saved her the trouble of licking things: greens felt like plush velvet under her fingers. Blacks were carapace-brittle. Red was gravel, white was slick and cold as glass. "This will do fine," she said, "even if it is wasteful and frivolous."

"So, it's about this old mob fixer trying to do right by -- the world, I guess. His family. His old victims. For his past crimes." Dave shoved his hands into his pockets. "I thought you'd like it. We going out tonight?"

"Oh, yes." Name number ten, a man who'd burnt down a not inconsiderable number of properties for persons in search of insurance money. Wasting resources was intolerable. Wasting them for profit was unthinkable, and would have gotten him strung up until his feet stopped kicking. "Would you like – _details_?"

"How about no."

GC: WH4T D1ST1NGU1SH3S 4 L3G4L SYST3M 1S 1TS COMPR3H3NS1V3 SCOP3 4ND 1TS R3GUL4T1V3 POW3RS W1TH R3SP3CT TO OTH3R ORG4N1Z4T1ONS  
GC: TH3 CONST1TUT1ON4L 4G3NC13S TH4T 1T D3F1N3S H4V3 TH3 3XCLUS1V3 L3G4L R1GHT TO 4T L34ST TH3 MOR3 3XTR3M3 FORMS OF CO3RC1ON  
TT: Good morning to you, too.  
TT: I haven't looked at the police blotter yet today, what were you up to last night?   
GC: TH4TS FROM ON3 OF YOURS THOUGH  
TT: You haven't slept, have you.   
GC: NOT R34LLY  
GC: 1T W4S 4NOTHER TH13F, NOTH1NG SP3C14L!   
TT: You do seem to have a fondness for them.   
GC: WOW TH4T W4S SO SMOOTH, 1 D1D NOT 3V3N NOT1C3 YOUR CL3V3R J4B  
GC: TW3NTY PO1NTS TO TROLL SLYTH3R1N  
GC: 4NYW4Y H3 W4S ONLY 4 TH3OR1ST  
GC: 4 SCHOL4R, NOT 4 TRU3 PR4CT1T1ON3R OF TH3 L4W  
GC: 4ND ONLY ON3 3XC3RPT PULL3D OUT TO PROV3 MY PO1NT!   
TT: What was your point again? 

That the human cheekbone couldn’t take the kind of slap a troll one could. The human neck's range of motion, when she grabbed someone's hair to yank their head back and let them feel her cool breath on her face, her empty eyes staring into what they imagined to be the pits of their souls – it was pathetic.

"And are you _afraid_?" she would ask.

It only took three trials for Dave to figure out that this was his moment to draw his sword, had he not already drawn it. That was not even a quarter of the way down her list. He wasn't perfect, but neither was she; as a weapon, he was responsive to her hand but not yet trained.

GC: SUPPOS3 1 H4V3 4 HUM4N ON MY L1ST  
GC: 1 M34N, WH4T 3LS3 WOULD 1 H4V3 ON MY L1ST  
GC: NO H1STORY OF V1OL3NC3  
GC: NOTH1NG TO SUGG3ST TH4T H3 1S SCUM, OTH3R TH4N P3DDL1NG DUB1OUS WH1T3 POWD3RS FOR TH3 CONSUMPT1ON OF TH3 W34K 4ND TH3 POOR  
GC: 4ND Y3T! 3V3RY ON3 OF H1S CUSTOM3RS 3NDS UP D34D. OR 3NOUGH OF TH3M TH4T MY 4LL S331NG 3Y3 T4K3S NOT1C3  
GC: TH4T W4S 4 JOK3, S4Y 'H4'  
TT: Ha.  
TT: This is, of course, wholly theoretical.   
GC: NO, 1M THINKING AHEAD  
TT: Ah.  
TT: Curiosity, then. If you're asking me to explain his motives.  
TT: Remember, we're not trolls.   
GC: TH3 G4MZ33 TH1NG W4S 4 ON3-OFF OK4Y  
TT: If you insist.  
TT: Do you agree that every troll will kill at least one other troll in his or her lifetime? I understand that these lifetimes can extend into the centuries.   
GC: Y3S, TH1S 1S TRU3  
TT: Therefore, you look at it as an inevitability, rather than an aberration.   
GC: WHO4444 YOUV3 B33N TH1NK1NG 4BOUT TH1S  
GC: 1 M34N YOUR3 M1SS1NG TH3 M4RK L1K3 CR4ZY BUT K33P GO1NG >;]  
TT: I don't mean to say it's something you all want to do, I mean it's something you expect to have to do. Self-defense. Mercy killing. Out of necessity, from childhood.   
GC: >8/  
TT: And humans are violent, but not wholly predatory.   
GC: Y34H SUR3  
TT: Bear with me.  
TT: Because we aren't wholly predatory, when one of the herd is a bit more violent than the rest, there are mechanisms, at least in theory. Social, interpersonal, legal. For minimizing, if not preventing, the damage they have the potential to cause.  
TT: But what if that herd member was smart enough to hide his tendencies until such time as he could get away with murder?  
TT: A troll wouldn't have this problem.   
GC: W3 4R3 NOT 4 H3RD R4C3, NO  
TT: But this human, having had neither practical experience of killing nor any expectation of getting the opportunity, would be curious as to whether or not he could truly get away with it.  
TT: And by choosing victims society at large considers scum and a blight, why, he's almost doing the world a favor. I don't mean to infer some sort of god complex, of course. I don't have a dossier in front of me.   
GC: 4ND 1TS NOT L1K3 YOUD B3 PROJ3CT1NG OR 4NYTH1NG  
TT: But in the spirit of inquiry, what might he be capable of?  
TT: Did I just type all of that.   
GC: H3H3  
GC: 1 W1LL S4V3 H1M FOR L4ST, TH3N  
TT: Welp. 

*

"Hey, maybe we could get tee-shirts. Team Vicious. Team Blade. Team Juicy. Team Severe and Debilitating Daddy Issues. Team Slaughtermelon. God, I'm gonna feel stupid if you're awake right now. Sweatpants? Matching booty shorts? I've got the booty, you've got the short? Nah, you'd make me actually get them, Team Juicy in bright-ass red, slap my rear when you call me _lovely assistant_ and tell me to get you a hot cuppa coffee to pour on whatever sad motherfucker you've got on the courtblock tonight -- "

The evenings after Dave stayed in bed with her all day were the worst.

She thrashed, she shrieked, she woke curled around him, clinging to his front, legs around his waist and blood sticky under her claws. And he talked to her the whole time, out of some vain -- some _human_ \-- hope that it would get through to her and be a comfort.

"Morning," he said. Like she had not hurt him at all! The sun set over his shoulder, and he kept his lower body levered quite pointedly away from her. She passed a finger over the wounds she'd left, and she had not gone too deep; Dave would clean and bandage them with little ceremony and no complaint.

Her laptop was under the bed. Dave stepped on the power cord and hissed, but kept walking. At first she had gloried in the mess they made together, drawing on the walls and dropping things where they would. Years passed, and she learned that her life was easier if she knew where every thick cord was on the floor, every overflow stack of books organized by color and used as signpost as much as distraction.

Terezi passed a hand over the book on her bedside table _Known to Evil_ in butter-sticky yellow and oily blue under her fingers. The list, folded and unfolded to the point of tearing along its seams, was her bookmark. She didn't have the heart to re-copy it. She went over the details of her next case, and could not manage to doze off again.

"How about we go somewhere nice tonight?" Dave said, once he'd showered, holding up two ties for her to choose between.

She pointed at the blue one, just to be contrary. "We are on a schedule, Dave," she said. "We don't have the _time_."

"Wrong answer, not actually a question, we're going somewhere nice."

Dave hadn't worn a suit since the game. She rolled out of bed to investigate.

First she ran her fingers over the shoulder-seams, then up the sides of his neck to play with his hair. He'd stopped wearing his sunglasses indoors ages ago, and so there was nothing to impede her progress when she prodded at the tender, thin skin of his eyelids and heard the catch in his breath as he assured himself that she would never hurt him, not even when her claws came too close to his eyeball for comfort. Solid cheekbones, straight nose, Dave Strider was built _linear_. It was neat draftsmanship. The ointment on his cuts mingled with the smell of clean cotton and wool. She had no way of apologizing but this, or else she didn't want to find one.

"And, look, if you hate it, we can always get -- I dunno, something gross after. One order of Mick's Burger Hut's greasiest, guaranteed to clog your arteries, conksuck service or your money back -- "

"Dave," she said, "let's go."

The concert hall smelled of despair, anxiety, and overpolished wood, oily and sticky to her tongue and heady on the nose. It was filled to the brim with sound, waves of murmurs breaking over her from every side. Dave sat them in the back.

"Augh, I have been gored through by the suspensebeast," Terezi said under her breath. "You can tell me where we are any day now!" 

"Good ol' Mick's Burger Hut, where'd you think?" he said, and she punched his arm. But he was all wound up inside, worse than he'd been at the first trial. She rested her head on his shoulder, careful of her horns. 

Before she could say something -- to assuage his nerves, to wind him up further, she could not decide -- four humans came out bearing implements she'd only encountered on her Youtube wanderings and only heard through tinny speakers rendered tinnier by her keen ears.

Had she grabbed his wrist, she would have shattered his bones, so she held his sleeve the entire time. Music was competition, not cooperation. Harmony was incidental and to be avoided, never a feature of design, and the whole exercise was _highblood frivolity_ , for long-lived fishtrolls with no more practical contribution to make to empire and empress but whose political prowess kept them from being culled, though there was a substantial body of precedent --

"TZ," he said, after the torrent of applause guttered out. "You all right?" The pads of his fingers brushed over the backs of her knuckles, his calluses rasping over her old scars. It was an unconscious tenderness, hatched from anxiety, but tenderness nonetheless.

She clapped her hands together and followed the sound as it bounced off the walls, warped, and returned to her changed. (Earth films were impossible; they were sound without dimension, no matter how clever the theater.) "I am fine," she said, "I am very much fine. _Decidedly_ fine." She stopped herself before she went too far. Terezi Pyrope did not babble, not even through a pleasant buzz in her head.

Dave put a careful arm around her shoulder. "We going out tonight?"

If she'd said yes, he would have gone along without question. They should have been kicking in the ribs of a mugger who haunted the blocks around their apartment: kicking his ribs in, because that's what he'd done to his last victim. It would have been poetic. "No," she said, "let's just go home."

*

GC: W3 W3R3 4N 1MP3R14L R4C3.  
GC: 1M4G1N3 1T 4S 4 WH33L! 3V3RY SPOK3 ON TH3 WH33L 1S D3D1C4T3D TO HOLD1NG TH3 WH33L 1N 1TS PL4C3, 4ND 4LSO DR1V1NG 1T FORW4RD. TH3 L4W 1S WH4T K33PS TH3 SPOK3S 4TT4CH3D TO TH3 WH33L.  
GC: 1T 1S PR3S3RV4T1V3 4ND CORR3CT1V3  
GC: 4ND TH3 H1GH3ST C4LL1NG 4 TROLL COULD HOP3 TO 4SP1R3 TO 1N S3RV1C3 OF H34 1MP3R1OUS COND3SC3NSION  
TT: Do you believe that?   
GC: SHUT YOUR OMN1VOROUS PROT31N CHUT3 1 4M H4V1NG 4N 3P1PH4NY  
GC: OF COURS3 1 B3L13V3 TH4T  
GC: BUT YOUR SP3C13S H4S NO PURPOS3 OR D1R3CT1ON! YOU 4R3 PL4N3TBOUND, YOU W4LLOW AROUND 1N YOUR MUD 4ND YOUR 1NT3RN3C1N3 CONFL1CTS OV3R SCR4PS OF SO1L 4ND W4T3R  
GC: 4ND TH1S 1S WHY YOU W1LL N3V3R CONQU3R TH3 ST4RS!!!  
GC: YOU N33D 4N 3MPR3SS. 4LT3RN14 H4S N3V3R B33N W1THOUT 4N 3MPR3SS.   
TT: I suppose the nostalgia-driven imperial rhetoric was inevitable.   
GC: Y34H Y34H 4LT3RN14 1S D34D  
GC: YOUR3 G3TT1NG OFF ON TH1S 4R3NT YOU >8|  
TT: Is that the impression I'm giving? Tell me more.   
GC: H4H4H4H4 HOW 4BOUT NO  
GC: NOT UNT1L YOU CL4R1FY YOUR POS1T1ON  
TT: Are we going to spiral the vast toilet bowl of this conversation in an ever-tightening ouroboros of evasive horseshit, as a prelude to our simultaneously disappearing down the drain and up our asses?   
GC: 4R3 YOU GO1NG TO TRY TO OUT-3V4D3 M3 BY 4CKNOWL3G1NG TH4T W3R3 BOTH 3V4D1NG, WH3N 1N R34L1TY YOU W3R3 TH3 F1RST TO 3V4D3 4ND TH3R3FOR3 TH3 ON3 WHO OW3S TH3 F1RST 3XPL4N4T1ON?   
TT: I think we should pursue another line of questioning.   
GC: D3F1N1T3LY G3TT1NG OFF ON TH1S  
TT: No more than you are, I assure you. 

*

Do you believe that?

Had she looked into the true law and found the law wanting, she would have torn it down and rebuilt it in her image.

FLARP was designed to kill off the weakest of the species, and to force the strongest into endless tournament; there was no point letting little fiefdoms form, only to break them up again on each crop’s ascension. It taught cooperation. It taught the ability to work in units of two and four. _Everything_ was meant to make them into good soldiers for the empire. 

Vriska Serket had been a nasty piece of work when Terezi found her and an even worse one by the time they were done with each other.

"First rule!" she'd said, grinning as if Terezi wasn't an instant from pushing her swordcane through her throat. "If you want to team up with me, I get _all_ the corpses. For my lusus. And you get to weed out all the cheaters and the real killers, the ones who do it for fun. Everybody wins, or at least _we_ do."

"If _I_ want to team up with _you?_ You don't care about justice. You do not give two shits about anything!" Terezi had said.

Vriska shrugged and flopped back onto the forest floor and looked back and forth at the canopy over their heads. Her fractal eye tracked just a second slower than the other. "Not really. Let me up, Redglare?"

Terezi had not reached out her hand. Sweeps and sweeps later, sitting half in Dave's lap, she could not recall ever having touched Vriska, or what she'd thought justice was back then, anyway. 

"It's families," Terezi said, listening to Dave's heart beat. She was keeping him from his coursework, and did not care. " _Families_ are your problem. You don't get to choose who you're bound to! It's all – biological. Hormonal."

"Never should've let you into the Plato, you're making a goddamn mess," he said. "Was it Kant this time? Damnit, TZ, did you eat the Kant again, I ain't made of money."

"We have all the money we need." It was as close to talking about Rose as they had ever come. She got her hands under his tee-shirt, on his shoulders, and felt the scars she'd left on him. The way he leaned back trapped her in place; why, it was practically an invitation to sit fully in his lap. She could not in good conscience fail to oblige him. "And I'm doing serious anthropological work, here! _Jurisprudential_ anthropology."

"Sounds legit." He yawned and let his head loll back against the wall behind the sofa. 

"The only two ties a troll forms that are not a result of a mutual decision are their lusus and their Ancestor," Terezi went on, ignoring his bared throat. It wasn't a gesture of trust, it was just absent-mindedness. She could have pressed her face to it, or her lips, or simply strangled him. "Both of these bonds are simple, when you get down to it! Your ancestor is the dead troll with whom you share the greatest percentage of genetic material, and by leaving a token behind for you, they tie you into the great past of the Empire. And your lusus makes you strong and keeps you safe, so that you make it to the fleet whole and hale."

"Yeah, yours did such a good job of that."

"Dave! I was raised by a fucking egg. _Rude_."

She felt it the moment he lost the battle of staying alert under her touch. "Keep going," he said, almost as an afterthought.

"With what, lovely assistant?"

"Shit, don't call me that at home. Eggmom, you were talking about your eggmom."

"Yes," Terezi said. "And your Earth _families_. They are self-perpetuating units! You never know the kind of freedom from attachment – "

"So it's not Kant, you've been huffing the Buddhists. Big fat Zen hoglegs -- "

She clapped a hand over his mouth. He licked her palm."The kind of _freedom from attachment_ my race knows. Egregious attachments. Every troll swears allegiance to the Empire first, and then to the quadrantmates that they _choose_. It's cleaner. It's tidier."

"So humans aren't a big old army," Dave said, once she'd let him wrestle himself free. "So what?"

She covered Dave's mouth again, and if her hand were a bit larger she would have covered his nose as well. Dave didn't answer her. "So," she said. "So it makes for easier governance. Everyone knows their place. Everyone learns to think of themselves as instruments. Vriska, for example – "

"Oh, man, feels great being compared to your ex-hategirlfriend."

"Shh, I am pontificating. Interrupt me again, and I'll make you find me a lectern. Vriska couldn't be used, she could only be _channeled._ I _pointed her in a direction_. But she was still a tool!"

"I'll say."

"Not _that_ kind," Terezi said. She traced a clawtip over his lips to confirm the presence of the rare coolkid grin, though by no means was it necessary. It was a simple distraction from the memory of smelling deep cerulean blossoming on orange robes. The contrast had been beautiful against the black of the Veil, made art by her blurred scent-vision. She had thought herself disgusting for a full sweep, for so much as thinking that.

Dave shifted his weight forward. He made no effort to disguise the intent of his movements; she could have stopped him putting his arms around her. "Scales on which justice is weighed, sword with which justice is enacted?"

A sword was far more threatening than dice and left considerably less to chance. "She knew it," Terezi said, "and she _hated_ it. Deep down, that is. But, you -- you like being put to use, don't you?"

His exhalation stopped halfway up his throat, the tiniest caesura of breath. 

"God, get over yourself," he said. He stood up, and she moved with him, hands on his forearms, the momentum carrying them a few steps back into the middle of the living room. The back of her shin bumped against the coffee table. They swayed. They steadied. They had moved as one person for so long, why stop now?

"Make me," she said. "Your noose-tying has improved."

Dave spun them around in a circle on the way to the bedroom, dancing them over extension cords and carpets that felt like fine-crushed gravel under her feet. "Aw, shucks, Neophyte Pyrope, you sure know how to make a girl feel real special." 

No shrieking or clawing tonight; she would stay awake, and give him his rest. Come next evening, she would pull a bag of dubious white powder out from under the bed, where Dave never cleaned. They would have one last trial. Come next evening, perhaps she would dream of nothing. 

She didn't kiss him, even though the moment seemed right.


End file.
